For He So Loved the World
by Calworks
Summary: In which Sora and Terra surprise each other, and Riku plays a big part despite only having two paragraphs of screen time.
**Title: For He So Loved the World
** **Category:** Kingdom Hearts  
 **Type:** character bonding / oneshot / practice (theme and characterization)  
 **Words:** 2598  
 **Summary:** In which Sora and Terra surprise each other, and Riku plays a big part despite only having two paragraphs of screen time.  
 **Notes:** This would theoretically take place after the gang has liberated Aqua from the Realm of Darkness and, with her help, brought Terra back to himself, and before they go off to figure out how to wake Ven up. Who can say if it's actually canon-compliant with KHIII still not quite out, but the idea of a scenario like this fascinated me, so I had to venture it. Enjoy!

* * *

"Where are you going?"

"…That didn't take long, did it."

Sora hesitated, uncertainty staying his advance in the face of Terra's unexpectedly weary tone. " _What_ didn't take long?"

Several paces away, defined merely by a silhouette in the darkness of the night, Terra sighed softly. "It didn't take long for you guys to notice I left."

"Oh… Actually, only me and Goofy noticed. I think everyone else is still trying to figure out our next move." Sora rubbed the back of his neck sheepishly. Everyone—Aqua, the King, Riku, Donald, Goofy—was back at the campsite, all but the latter so deeply embroiled in their argument that they had noticed neither he nor Terra slip away. With four meters separating he and Terra, Sora felt hyperaware of the miles between he and the campsite. He could no longer see its glow behind him; under the cloudy night, only sparse patches of stars struggled to provide light to see by.

Terra stood unsettlingly still and silent as he pondered Sora's words. Sora shifted uncomfortably, silently regretting—not for the first time—that he'd motioned for Goofy to stay put when he'd gone after the other Keyblade Wielder. He felt he would give just about anything for some moral support.

Finally, a rustling of fabric and scrape of armor heralded Terra surfacing from his thoughts.

"Good."

The sound moved farther up the path—he was walking away.

"Wha—?" Sora couldn't help an incredulous double take as his brain tried to catch up with his struggling senses. "Hey, wait! You didn't answer my question! Where are you going?"

"I'm going to fix this," Terra replied shortly.

"'To fix…'? _This?_ You mean…all…?" Sora waved his arms in a general all-encompassing gesture, unable to find the words to describe the many, many, _many_ crises the group had on its plate.

Terra couldn't have seen the hand movement in the near darkness, but he must have gotten the message. "Yeah." He continued walking, staying several steps ahead of the shorter boy.

Sora tried to wrap his brain around that. "…Without us?"

"It's my fault," Terra replied simply, as if that was enough to explain everything. Sora didn't buy it.

"So?"

Finally, Terra came to an abrupt halt. His silhouette stood stiffly against the pale grass surrounding them, like a sharply-cut statue. Sora realized suddenly that he wasn't dealing with someone entirely alien.

"You really don't get it?"

Sora recognized that silhouette. He knew that tone; in fact, he knew all of the signs: the short sentences, the set of the shoulders, the apparent fascination with the middle distance, the monotonous tone underscored with tension. The exhaustion. The temper veiling the exhaustion. All were classic symptoms of what Sora had long since been calling "Time-to-Remind-Riku-That-He's-Not-Actually-Possessed-by-Xehanort's-Heartless-Anymore".

 _You really don't get it?_ Terra had demanded.

He had no idea just how well Sora understood.

"I get that you're trying to fix your mistakes," Sora replied carefully, weighing every word. "And I get that you don't want help, because you feel responsible."

"…Then let me do this."

Footsteps, walking away.

"No!" Sora moved quickly, darting in front of Terra and bodily blocking his way. "You need to hear me out!" Was Terra going to barrel right through him, or stop and listen? He had no way of knowing. He couldn't help the tension thrumming through his veins as he waited for the result.

"I don't have time for this."

Sora marveled at how such an angry sentence could sound so very tired, involuntarily relaxing slightly at the sound. "You need to _make_ time," he responded, unintentionally softening his tone in response to Terra's uncharacteristic show of weakness. "Look, you may think you need to do this alone, but that's not true. If there's one thing I've learned, it's that you never have to fix your mistakes alone, because friends stick with you no matter what."

No response. Sora shifted nervously.

"It doesn't matter what mistakes you think you've made."

Was that clenching of fists he heard? He couldn't be sure.

"And you have friends here who won't let you go."

Still no response. Sora wished Kairi was there.

"Aqua and Ventus—"

He heard it a second before it happened—the intake of breath, the low growl—but though he cut himself off, the words had been said, and Terra was already pouncing on them.

" _Ven isn't here!_ "

"I know, but—"

"Because of me!"

"No—"

"He's gone because _I_ was weak—"

"You're not—"

"—and because _I_ failed—"

"No—"

"It's _all my fault_."

"It's _not_ —"

" _Quiet!"_

Sora flinched back at the fury behind Terra's snarl, half-expecting the big warrior to launch himself at him right then and there. He quivered in the darkness, sword hand trembling with the knowledge that, in a few seconds, he might have to fight for his life against someone he didn't want to hurt.

No attack came, though. Gradually, his fear quieted, as he listened to Terra laboriously inhale and exhale his frustration, and came to the realization that the rage wasn't aimed at him.

"…Are you okay?"

"…This is why I need to go alone," Terra eventually replied, voice low and dry.

"I have friends with worse tempers than yours," Sora hedged hesitantly.

"You _know_ that's not what I'm talking about."

Terra's obvious resignation was such that Sora could not deny it.

"…I also have friends with worse pasts."

Terra snorted weakly in disbelief.

"No, really! Look…" Sora sighed and folded his arms, staring determinedly at the ground as he tried to feel out the right words. "I may not be Ven, but I get it. I _really_ do get it. I… I have a friend who fell a lot deeper into darkness than you did."

Just thinking about the past could hurt.

Terra shifted in surprise, a gray blot against the block night. "…Seriously?"

Sora did not like thinking about that leg of his journey—he did not like remembering the pain—the literal heartbreak—the cold turquoise eyes—the sharp-as-blades voice—but he sensed a need. What kind of need, he didn't know for sure, but something—the little sixth sense that never led him astray when it came to potential new friends—was telling him that, if ever there was a time to dredge up evil memories, it had come.

"Yeah. You…you fought the darkness. Aqua—" He hesitated over the name, wary of a reaction. When none came, he continued with no small relief. "Aqua told us that you were tricked into it. But…he…accepted it."

He did not like admitting that. The Riku of now possessed one of the brightest lights Sora had ever encountered, a heart that, having tasted of the darkness once, could never let even a shadow exist within it ever again. He was comforted by that Riku, even if that Riku never seemed to see his own light. It made his heart sad to remember that a long trial of toil and temptation under the weight of the darkness had spawned the Riku of now.

"He wanted to use the power to protect his friends," Sora added, irrationally defensive of fifteen-year-old Riku. "He thought he could control it."

Terra's words were slow and measured. "He thought it would give him the strength to protect what matters."

Sora started in surprise. "Y…yeah."

"…What happened?"

Why did Terra show such interest in this? He had been so determined to leave before, and now he was willing to stop completely just to hear—

Oh.

 _Oh_.

" _He lusted after strength,"_ Aqua had confided in one of her weaker moments. " _He thought, if he was strong enough, he could protect us…"_

Maybe…Sora had found his key to talking to Terra.

"If I tell you his story…do you promise to hear me out?"

The answer took a long time in coming. Sora breathed a sigh of relief when Terra finally replied: "Sure."

Sora smiled. "Okay." He dropped to the ground, folding his legs under him crisscross-applesauce, and patted the ground next to him invitingly. "It's a long story."

This time, Terra's hesitation did not last so long. The grass crunched and rustled under him as he lowered himself into a sitting position.

Sora nodded to himself. So far, so good…

"Okay," he repeated. "My friend… He… Well, he didn't like our world. It was too small, I guess. I didn't mind much…but having water surrounding him like that always got under his skin. He wanted to escape to other worlds. He was the one who thought of leaving our island in the first place."

Sora found himself laughing softly as he remembered lying back on the paopu tree. What do you think is out there? _I dunno_. He'd said it with such nonchalance. "I just tagged along. I didn't really care, as long as I got to see it all. And as long as I got to stay with my friends."

Two years—maybe even one year—before, those words would have tasted bitter on his tongue. He swallowed the phantom pain and continued.

"Anyway—then our world fell to the Heartless. The Keyblade saved me, but _he_ fell to the darkness. He wasn't afraid of it, and it just…ate him up." Sora shuddered.

"…I'm sorry."

Sora was taken about by the sincere mourning in Terra's tone and obvious slump of his shoulders. "Wha—no! No, he didn't…he didn't die. He survived. He just… He was so desperate to find Kairi and me, and his fear made his darkness stronger. He wanted strength, to put the pieces back together, I think. He was afraid of losing."

" _He feared failure_ ," Aqua had told him. " _He never wanted to ask for help._ "

"And he…he changed."

Sora could still remember perfectly Riku's mocking words: " _But I thought you_ liked _games, Sora. Or are you_ too cool _for them now that you've got the Keyblade?"_ Sora never wanted to hear Riku use that tone with him again—just spiteful enough that the familiar banter hurt.

"He had so much anger…" Sora couldn't raise his voice above a murmur. "He just…wasn't him anymore…"

Hearts, but this was becoming a hard talk.

"I understand."

"Huh?" Sora looked up in shock, meeting Terra's eyes for the first time that night.

"I let my emotions rule my head," Terra admitted, voice heavy with regret. "I wanted strength—power—to do what was right—and that just let the darkness in. And I was so mad at myself… I just took it out on the people around me, without even realizing it."

Sora stared at him for a long moment, stunned. "Y-yeah… Yeah, that happened to him, too. Eventually, he forgot that he'd started out with good intentions."

"He became obsessed with his goal?" Terra guessed.

"Too obsessed," Sora confirmed, marveling at this new understanding. "He let Xehanort possess him—" (The _"like you_ " went unsaid but deeply felt)—"and I had to fight him… He almost won…"

Sora had to close his eyes for a second and inhale slowly, fighting to keep the breath from shaking. _That was a long time ago_ , he reminded himself.

"Did you…?"

"No!"

The response exploded out of Sora in his shock, and he quickly took a moment to regain himself before continuing. "I mean… No. I could never… No. I didn't. That's actually… Well, that's why I thought you might need to hear this."

"What do you mean?"

Sora smiled shakily at Terra. "I still don't really get why he did what he did," he admitted. "But you do. You understand him. I think I understand Ven in the same way. You don't—but I've been in Ven's place, the same way you've been in my friend's. I watched a friend fall to darkness, just like he did."

He didn't miss how Terra flinched at that. He plowed on, hurrying to finish before the conversation became too much for the older Keyblade Wielder and drove him off.

"You think that you need to fix all your own mistakes because you don't deserve help, but no one else sees it like that. Even Ven won't when he wakes up. I _know_ that he'll still love you, because I still love my friend."

"Wait." Terra jerked his hands in something of a "hold on" gesture. "He became a monster, and you just—forgave him? Just like that?"

"He's my friend," Sora replied simply. "And he wanted me to forgive him. So I did."

"You're kidding."

"No." Sora pressed his fist against his heart and closed his eyes, feeling for the connection he knew existed between he and Riku. "No one is irredeemable. Not him…" He opened his eyes and met Terra's. "And not you."

Terra pondered his words deeply, but this time, the silence was not so awkward. Sora yawned, blinking back the slowly encroaching effects of this unplanned late-night encounter, but waited patiently.

"…You really think I can be forgiven."

"I know you can." Sora leaned back on his hands and looked up at the blazing stars and patchy clouds shining against the night sky.

"How does the story end?"

"He was so ashamed of what he did that he ran away."

"Then?"

Sora smiled slightly. "I followed him."

"…Just like that."

"Yup. He had some noble idea about fixing his own mistakes—" (Sora pinned Terra with a significant look) "—but I beat some sense into him."

"…Huh."

Sora laughed tiredly. "That's what friends are for." With a sigh of relief that the story had ended, he let his arms buckle under him and flopped back onto the grass. As he stared up at the star-strewn sky, he wondered idly where all the clouds had gone.

Terra chuckled, and Sora's heart lifted at the sound. "I guess, all this time, I thought I had to do everything on my own…"

Sora craned his neck to look at Terra. "There's no way your friends are going to let you do that."

Terra smiled at him—a real, honest smile, complete with squinty, glittering eyes. Under the light of the moon, he looked less like a hulking demon and more like a redeemed angel.

"Yeah. I see that now."

The final remnants of the tension drained from between Sora's shoulder blades, leaving him to relax into the suddenly-very-soft grass. He almost fell asleep, lying there between earth and sky with a comfortable silence cocooning he and Terra. Eventually, however, he caught himself nodding off and shook himself out of it with a shudder and a yawn.

"Terra… I'm your friend," he said slowly, trying to focus on his words through the late-night haze settling over his mind. "I'm your friend, and I'm not going to let you go fight alone. That's not what friends do."

Terra laughed again; Sora liked the sound. "That simple, huh?"

"Yeah."

The frank answer had Terra laughing even harder. "Sora, you sure are something."

"Good or bad?"

Sora couldn't see Terra's face from where he lay, but his heart could feel the gentleness of his smile. "Great."

 **((**

When they finally arrived back at the camp, it was to find Aqua pacing anxiously, in sharp contrast with the peacefully-slumbering Disney Castle trio and the completely-unfazed-looking Riku. The silver-haired boy took one look at Sora and Terra, taking in how comfortable they now stood next to each other, how Terra's slumped shoulders spoke less of exhaustion and more of a simple willingness to rest, how Sora was grinning sleepily from ear to ear.

He tilted his head slightly in Aqua's direction and murmured, without a hint of doubt or apology: "Told you."


End file.
